Reflection Paper on Managing at the Speed of Change, D. Connor

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.”– Harry Emerson Fosdick

            The central theme of the book is well reflected in the subtitle:  "How resilient managers succeed and prosper where others fail."  Resilience is an ongoing process that requires time and effort and engages people in taking a number of steps to enhance their response to adverse circumstances. Resilience implies that after an event, a person or community may not only be able to cope and recover, but also change to reflect different priorities arising from the experience and prepare for the next stressful situation.  The idea Connor develops is that people (and groups) have a reserve capacity for change, one deeper than even they as individuals are aware of.  There are many factors that affect this reserve, and all winning leaders manage to implement changes in such a way that this reserved is never depleted.  There are even some discussions for growing the capacity for change - changes themselves are certainly not going to come any slower in this world.  Similarly, in discussing plans for change the idea of preparation arose: “pay for it now, or pay later; but you will pay.”

            Several times throughout the book, Conner talked about "surprise."  Resilience is tested not when people are surprised, but when they are surprised that they are surprised, if that makes any sense.  In other words: when people’s expectations are not met and they are thrown off balance, they react in ways that look like resistance to change.  This is when change is most difficult and resistance is the highest.  The solution from this viewpoint is to prepare people (and oneself) for change; create urgency for change; describe a new state that people will want to achieve; monitor as the change develops.  If many people start talking about the change you propose, the urgency can build and feed on itself. John Kotter a professor at Harvard Business School and world-renowned change expert introduced his 8-step change process in his 1995 book, "Leading Change." Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model suggests that for change to be successful, 75 percent of a company's management needs to "buy into" the change. In other words, you have to really work hard on Step 1, and spend significant time and energy building urgency, before moving onto the next steps. Don't panic and jump in too fast because you don't want to risk further short-term losses – if you act without proper preparation, you could be in for a very bumpy ride; which seems to correlate and be reiterated here with Conner.

            The idea of "speed of change" also arises with in this part of a manager dealing with various parts of change.  While changes are happening more and more, people still have (and want) a rhythm to their world, and if changes come too fast (or too slow?) they cannot survive them.  Convince people that change is necessary. This often takes strong leadership and visible support from key people within the organization. Managing change is not enough management must lead by example. One of the big challenges for leaders anywhere is that we cannot push change onto organizations faster than each individual organization can absorb them.  Yes, the organizational capacity for change can be managed, but at some point it has to work with the flow in the organization.  A quote from the beginning of the book examples this idea perfectly: “Our lives are the most effective and efficient when we are moving at a speed that allows us to appropriately assimilate the changes we face” (Connor, 1992).

            Going deeper, Conner discusses the core elements of (personal) resilience and the supporting elements of resilience within an organization or society - all as they have to do in relation to dealing with change.  A clear vision can help everyone understand why you're asking them to do something. When people see for themselves what you're trying to achieve, then the directives they're given tend to make more sense. This is expressed in Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model.

            For individuals, resilience has five characteristics that can be monitored and developed.  Throughout Conner's discussion of these elements, I couldn't help but think of any number of personal effectiveness discussions that start with some version of know thyself.  The personal characteristics are:

1. Positive: Display a sense of security and self-assurance that is based on their view of life as complex but filled with opportunity.
2. Focused: Have a clear vision of what they want to achieve.
3. Flexible: Demonstrate a special pliability when responding to uncertainty.
4. Organized: Develop structured approaches to managing ambiguity.
5. Proactive: Engage change rather than defend against it.

            There are seven supporting patterns that connect to resilience.  Combining these with knowledge of the personal characteristics above is a key to ever-improving the ability and capacity for people and organizations to handle change. 

            Here is a list each of these supporting patterns and some observations from the chapters as I reflected on each chapter.

            What is the nature of the change?  Is it micro (personal), organizational, or macro (larger than the organization)?  Change is perceived as "negative" when it has negative ramifications (of course), but also if people feel they have no ability to predict or control the change.  And I love this quote from p. 72: "We are more comfortable with change when our ability & willingness to change can help determine the outcome." The key to leading leadership change is the perception is fear during the change process.

            The familiar process for change: create pain, transition, end up in the desired state.  But it's not quite so simple, of course as a leader.  I liked the chemistry analogy of a transition process and "energy levels."  The desired state had better be a "lower energy" position from the current state - that's the only way you are going to get through the transition state, which often requires more energy (temporarily).  The perception of the masses is very important to the energy of the organization during the change. I also liked Conner's discussions of timing and perceptions here.

            There are four roles in change: Sponsor, Agent, Target and Advocate.  The sponsor must stay involved throughout the change - sponsor abandonment is one of the things that kills change initiatives (and any other business initiative for that matter).  I liked the comment that sponsors can really only manage a few change initiatives at a given time: they require active involvement.  Aspects of perception come in here too, as each role has a different view of what needs to be done and what the impact is going to be on their work life. 

            Resistance happens any time the change causes a disruption or a loss of equilibrium.  A big aspect of resistance is the frame of reference of people: some will see the change as an obvious extension of the current direction, and others will see it coming out of left field as a total disruption of their work.  Winning change leaders understand that these perspectives exist and adjust their approach for each of these audiences.  There was another interesting aspect in this chapter: that while some resistance arises from negatively perceived changes, other resistance will appear from people who (initially) had a positive perception of the change.  For the negative people, the process they go through looks something like the grief cycle: Immobilization (shock, surprise), Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Testing, Acceptance.  For the people who have the positive initial perception, the cycle reminds me of Blanchard's Situational Leadership model: uninformed optimism, informed pessimism, hopeful realism, informed optimism, completion.  I also liked his idea of "sober selling" of a change: essentially, don't over-hype things because it can come crashing down on you.  And if people back out of an idea after hearing a more realistic ("sober") description, they were probably going to back out anyway.

            This was an interesting description of the stages of commitment and how change efforts progress through each stage, including what happens if change efforts are canceled at a given stage.  He breaks the stages into three main phases: Preparation (with stages of Contact and Awareness), Acceptance (with stages of Understanding and Positive Perception), and Commitment (with stages of Installation, Adoption, Institutionalization and Internalization).  In comparison to Kotter's 8 Steps, which is a process, this was much more about what happens as you flow through any kind of change process.  You get deeper and deeper commitment.  I like the explicit acknowledgement and discussion of the checking-out process when changes are cancelled or stopped.

            Of course culture impacts a change effort, but what is culture anyway?  In Conner's view (and I tend to agree), culture reflects the interrelationships of shared behavior, beliefs, and assumptions in an organization that have developed over time.  Culture always acts in self-preservation, so that changes which affect culture will always see exhaustion, as this uses up reserves of resilience.  Unfortunately for change efforts, many aspects of culture are buried deep in the psyche of the organization and are difficult to uncover - uncovering them makes it easier to change them.  The implications of the discussion were that change leaders have three options: change the change; change the culture; or prepare to fail.

            This last pattern is all about how people work together and relationships.  Conner highlights three types of relationships that he sees: self-destructive, static, and synergistic.  It is only the synergistic relationships that can thrive under change situations.  And the discussion here and in the Culture section reminded me of the ideas of Tribal Leadership: that the more successful organizations tap into a Tribal level of connection and culture that help the organization weather any kind of storm.  One thought I had about the discussion was whether anyone has done network analysis with a mind to looking for synergistic (and destructive and static) relationships. 

            With key insights into the fear of change many of us encounter, and many important lessons to understanding how humans, the most controlling type of species on the planet, can better work with change when it happens.

            Change is messy. Being able to identify the patterns of human behavior underlying that messiness is vital to our success as change practitioners. I offer insights to identifying those patterns and applying processes and frameworks that address them.

It is part of human nature that people will not change unless they see the benefits of doing so. Many organizations are full of people who feel very comfortable and do not see the need to change. They are complacent in their positions and this is the real enemy of a successful change.
Characteristics of complacent employees
• Say yes and do nothing
• Achieve 50% of what they could achieve
• Lack of initiative
• Low motivation
• Do what they need to do and no more
• Satisfy customers rather than delight them
• Influence others to take the same route
• Block new ideas and innovation
In order to start a journey of change and innovation, leaders need to instill a strong sense of urgency within a significant number of their people. Only having a mere 5% of them feeling a sense of urgency is unlikely to create the momentum needed to move things forward. Leaders need to create this sense of urgency across all their teams. So, how do leaders do this?
They start by setting higher standards: complacency happens when people feel that they can easily achieve the targets and the goals that are set. Setting higher standards has several benefits:
• It stretches people to achieve more.
• People feel more motivated when they are achieving more.
• It differentiates between poor performers, average performers and high performers.
• It sets the standard and therefore your standards of what ‘good’ looks like.
From the book I found specific questions leaders should ask themselves when evaluating the urgency present among team members.
1. How clear are my team members on what they are expected to achieve, both personally and as a team?
2. How stretching are these goals?
3. Who is performing well and who is not performing well?
4. How much feedback am I giving them on their performance?
5. When was the last time that I gave recognition to an individual for great performance?
6. How much are the team members acting on the feedback that I am giving them?
7. What are the implications for people if they do not develop their standards of performance?
8. What am I doing to stretch the high achievers?
9. What am I doing to develop the poor performers?
            Individuals will only start to gain a sense of urgency once they know how important it is to change. If they are unsure about what they are doing well and what they need to do differently, they will have little incentive to make changes. Leaders need to have clear, honest conversations with their people on how they view their performance and what constitutes ‘good performance’ in any particular field. These conversations need to be held regularly with a high degree of honesty and challenge. Many leaders work from the assumption that as they do not need any feedback from others, they do not have to give feedback to their team members either. If people are to perform well, they need to know how they are performing from the perspectives of their teams, colleagues, customers and leaders. It may not be easy to listen to, but if they are to develop their performance, they need to have data on which to measure themselves.

            Research verifies that we follow one of two patterns of behavior following any change in our personal or work life.  We either seek change as loss or change as opportunity. Kubler-Ross Framework for response to a negative change follows a similar process to the 7 stages of grief.  The Kubler-Ross framework is:

•Immobilization – shock, confusion.

•Denial – ignores the changes or its consequences.

•Anger – based on feelings of frustration and hurt.

•Bargaining – seeks to minimize impact of the change, this signals the beginning of acceptance.

•Depression –may perceive the situation as beyond their control and display lack of energy or interest.

•Testing- sees ways where s/he can regain some measure of control, test news ways of coping with new reality.

•Acceptance - fully accepts change although s/he may not like it.

            The Kubler-Ross theory also includes responses to a positive change in the form of both uniformed optimism (high expectations not based on facts) and informed optimism (reality of change becomes clear, may have second thoughts and doubts). At this stage of the change process, the new environment may be rejected, especially if the proper preparations aren’t made in advance.  The idea of hopeful realism is created as the expected outcomes are evolving through the implemented changes, this helps alleviate any concerns that still exist.  Confidence in the process will continue to grow as each change produces a positive outcome.  At the completion of the process, there will still be disruption to the organization.  All successful program changes will lead to some level of disruption. However, implemented properly, those disruptions can be minimized and can ultimately lead to overwhelming growth.

 “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Gandhi

            If we as leaders are to be effective at helping others understand and manage complex change, we must not only have the ability to educate and facilitate—we must also model the behavior we need to see in those we serve. Who we are affects our relationships with others. Our self-image can limit us or propel us to greatness. We have to see ourselves as not only change specialists, but also exemplars for those we serve. Yes, it’s challenging, but without this aspect to the relationship, our guidance will seem more theoretical than practical (it may sound good but doesn’t translate to real life). Even worse, we can appear to our followers as providing questionable, if not bogus, guidance.

            At the very least, if we don’t mirror what we advocate, our ability to reframe and shape outcomes is reduced dramatically. The unspoken message is, “I can explain to you what to do but I don’t know how to actually function that way myself.” There are countless ways we as leaders can be role models. For example, we can make courageous decisions, analyze data objectively, and send straightforward communications. Another characteristic we should model, and one that is critical for leaders to acquire is resilience—yet many of us don’t demonstrate this to the extent we should.

            Conner suggests that as we now live in an era of perpetual change and disturbance, we need to expect more change: "we need to stop assuming we are one project away from things settling down." He says that we focus an inordinate amount of time and energy into trying to make people feel comfortable during a major change - where as the reality is they won’t – dramatic change is uncomfortable. The leader’s role in change is not to make people feel happy about the change: its helping them succeed despite their discomfort. It is not necessary for people to like what has happened to them – it is necessary that they make the adjustments that will help them succeed in the new environment.
Interestingly enough a mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once observed that “the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the society in which they occur.” We live in times that reflect such turmoil considering the failed economical situation of the U.S. and the mind set of most family units.  Never before has so much changed so fast and with such dramatic implications for the entire world with technology and various communications.  From the nuclear family to nuclear-arms treaties, cell phones to ipads, our way of life is transforming as we live it.
            At a personal level, change is intensifying dramatically for us all. We face an unsettling amount of individual change as evidenced by the alarming frequency of marriages, pregnancies, divorces, promotions, job changes, relocations, health problems, drug abuse, retirements, and family strife in our society today. Women juggle marriage, children, and careers; men are trying to be sensitive husbands and fathers after skirmishing on the corporate battlefield. In the workplace we are also confronted with massive change—ever-advancing technologies, mergers, acquisitions, rightsizing, new policies and procedures, reorganizations, and constantly shifting duties and reporting responsibilities. Besides changes at the individual and organizational levels, there are profound national and global transitions that are not only altering our lives but shaping those of our children and grandchildren.  The primary mode of communication has shifted from typography to electronics (and now voice mail, e-mail, and text messaging), thus changing the way people think, converse, and educate themselves.  Advanced media technology means that a significant shift in one part of the world is almost instantaneously known on the other side of the globe. The growth of information is occurring so fast that the “shelf life” of facts and technology has been reduced to almost nothing. The planet’s fragile ecosystems will eventually no longer sustain humankind’s capacity to reproduce, its increasing demand for natural resources, or its waste generation. Nations bordering the North Atlantic Ocean are no longer the dominant economic and political forces in the international arena. Advances in health care and genetic engineering promise new ways of fighting disease, but they also have opened a Pandora’s Box of ethical issues. Faster modes of transportation are becoming available, creating greater economic opportunities but with potentially severe psychological and environmental costs. The redefinition of traditional male and female, ethnic, and racial roles is reshaping the structure of our society. The global terrorism threat has penetrated our sense of physical, psychological, and social safety and affected travel, immigration policy, and many other aspects of our personal and work lives. It has also caused many organizations to implement security measures never before deemed necessary.

            The magnitude of change today can prompt a doom-and-gloom vision, or it can be seen as an opportunity for a fundamental shift in how we define ourselves, where we are going, and how we will accomplish our goals. I have chosen the latter option and hope to help others do so as well. Instead of viewing change as a mysterious event, we need to start approaching it as an understandable process that can be managed. This perspective allows people to avoid feeling victimized during transitional times. Promoting confidence that change can be planned and skillfully executed should be a goal each leader embraces fully.

            Throughout our education and the working life beyond, organizations have an immeasurable impact on how we view ourselves in relation to change. From our experiences in school, church, the military, and the many other organizations that touch our lives, most of us have come to accept similar ideals about organizational change. These assumptions are based mostly on fears and prejudice rather than fact.  Our perception of change is that it doesn’t really exist, that it isn’t truly possible.  Look at how we as a nation view bureaucracies like our government.  As a general whole, people believe that complete change as an impossibility. Failure to believe in true change comes from within.  Those of us who cannot fully embrace and implement change in our personal lives will most likely fail as leaders implementing change.  To this end, we must start at the beginning, ourselves. Because it is so widely believed that change isn’t possible, it makes sense that most people think it is natural for organizational change to be poorly handled and subsequently fail. To the contrary, Kotter indicates that badly handled organizational change is not the inevitable outcome of flawed human nature. It is merely the result of deeply ingrained habits, and these habits—even when present in one generation after another—can be modified.

            In summary, we cannot ignore the need for leaders to be highly skilled in leading change through any of our organizations. My personal belief is that the concept of change is outdated. Many of the large organizations still have change management units. This is missing the point. All leaders without exception need to have these skills as part of their core competence.  It is a key part of any leader’s role to lead change and to encourage change in their managers and teams. The role of Learning and Development is not to set up OD teams and Change Management Units but to develop these skills across the whole organization as a core set of skills at management and leadership levels. This links to the earlier discussion about the difference between leadership and management. Management is about a set of skills and processes that keep people and processes running smoothly and efficiently. Leadership is about defining the future, aligning people to that vision of the future and inspiring them to make it happen. Organizations that undergo successful change need to rely on leaders far more than we realize. Good managers will not create and implement change at the speed and scale that most organizations need if they are to stay in the game. Great leadership is required if organizations are to make the transitions that they need to make in the timescale they have open to them.

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